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The first time I heard of Mattes Schwarz, someone called him 'Stecken-Mattes'. Stecken was a defining, if almost secret, Cologne dance music venue of the 2000s and early 2010s, a minuscule basement without curfew and seemingly any other restrictions, where the up to twelve hour long DJ-sets felt like a tightly knit circle of friends just playing records to each other: The selectors from the night before and the one after reliably sitting right in front of the just over one meter long stretch of the bar that formed its booth, never missing out on a chance to see their mates play, heads nodding and hands clapping through the smoke-filled air, until someone started to sing along, and eventually everyone got up for a few hours of moves on the 15 square meter dancefloor, on a grey Wednesday or Saturday morning at 7 or just as well 10 am.
Mattes Schwarz started DJing in 1982 at age twelve, inspired by, as many West-German kids, the GI-DJs of the roller skating rinks around US army bases. While he got heavily involved in Cologne's BMX scene of the 90s, he never really stopped, and during the main years of being known as Stecken-Mattes and playing there each Friday night, he coincidently lived in Magazine record's homebase, North- Eastern Cologne's old harbour.
One day after Stecken's closure had sent restructuring ripples through the city - I imagine him getting up in the morning and taking a deep breath - he decided to send Magazine a few tracks.
'I Don't Know' is Mattes Schwarz' first release.

Celebrating the imprint's 10th anniversary, Mike Dehnert returns to his own Fachwerk label with a new full length LP available in 2x12" and digital, following a striking 12" on DJ Koze's Pampa Records at the end of 2016. Across 10 tracks, here Dehnert explores new territory with a restrained and subtle sound while retaining his commanding touch when it comes to creating deep club music. Intro sets the tone of the album, providing an profusion of tidal tones and textures that soak the listener in sound. Before long though, you're listening to the percussive stabs and pensive drums of Between No Words. Here we hear for the first time on the record the subtle but remarkable vocals of Albert Vogt, who returns throughout the LP. Listeners will also be reminded of Dehnert's skill for crafting complex and emotional music with very few elements, which becomes only more evident as this LP opens up. From here Dehnert traverses through dubbed out techno, deep house and downtempo, all with an experimental playfulness and a lightness of touch that only a producer with his talent and raw experience could pull off. The album peaks with the storming Providing Home 2. With swirling, unpredictable arpeggios, hard hitting drums and a sparingly used vocal hook, this is the track that'll ignite ecstasy across dancefloors for years to come. From here, Dehnert quickly cleanses the palette with the beatless Starground, a ringing and pulsing synth piece, pierced by all manner of klangs and bleeps. This perfectly sets up the album's final epic, Laxwax. Another one aimed squarely at the club, but this time it's for darker dancefloors. In stark contrast to its predecessors on the record, this track is insular, hypnotic and raw. Not content to end on such a note, Dehnert provides one last exertion. Outro is bombastic and pounding, with a rave inspired synth line and heavily swung percussion. Topped with cut up and percussive vocals, the track lives up to it's name summing up the LP and adding to it at the same time. This thoughtful record takes elements of modern pop music and extrapolates them with a patience rarely found within the genre itself. Backed by Dehnert's exceptional experience when it comes to producing club music, the result is an album that's simultaneously poppy and experimental, yet fundamentally rooted in techno. It's for that reason that this will surely be such a crossover hit; it has a palette that is broad yet refined, that will undoubtedly reach new ears while appeasing and surprising familiar ones.

(180 gr) Talamanca System are the unlikely trio of Gerd Janson, Phillip Lauer of Tuff City Kids and Mark Barrott. Their sole release in late 2014 became one of the best selling on the International Feel imprint. My Past Is Your Future brings them back together for a trio of magical productions that cumulate the power of their production skills and winks at a forthcoming album coming on the imprint this summer.

Talamanca System are the unlikely trio of Gerd Janson, Phillip Lauer of Tuff City Kids and Mark Barrott. Their sole release in late 2014 became one of the best selling on the International Feel imprint. My Past Is Your Future brings them back together for a trio of magical productions that cumulate the power of their production skills and winks at a forthcoming album coming on the imprint this summer.

Talamanca System's debut set them alight across the dance music press and the follow up catapults their distinctive take on modern dance music back into the current consciousness. The EP delivers a nirvanic state, with My Past Is Your Future's use of delicate chords, cascading keys and effortless groove. This is a divine record, paired with a Beatless Stars Is Space mix that strips it back to its core and the Chukka Chukka Dance mix squares up to the dancefloor with an end of night classic.

Best known for his burgeoning Running Back imprint, Gerd Janson is a DJ's DJ, a connoisseur of dance music with an inimitable style that cross genres. His production partner Phillip Lauer forms part of Tuff City Kids and Black Spuma, who have also released on International Feel, with a style that fuses the rhythms of house music with bold melodies to form structured songs. The result is music that can sit comfortably in many worlds.

Mark Barrott started out in the mid 90's as Future Loop Foundation and since has composed music for numerous films & TV shows and founded one of the world's leading music consultancies. His highly-respected International Feel label has featured albums from the likes of DJ Harvey and Jose Padilla, with a huge portion of the releases dedicated to Barrott's own anonymous pseudonyms. Barrott's Sketches from an Island project has gained support from Pitchfork, the Fader, the Guardian and even the Financial Times for its bold and quirky take on Balearic music.

The three of them form an exhilarating partnership in Talamanca System and this EP gives a snapshot into their forthcoming album due to be released on International Feel in May 2017.

Not Waving takes 2017 by the scruff with his Populist EP, consolidating the myriad stripes of his acclaimed Animals album in four extended peaktime hammers forged for darkrooms, basements and warehouses alike.
If last year's LP saw you thru from day-into-night, or vice-versa, this one is aimed squarely at the gurny hours of abandon in between, with ferocious acid lines and jabbing drums stripped down and strapped up to prompt reckless behaviour on the 'floor.
Containing his first material written in the wake of Animals, the Populist EP is Alessio Natalizia a.k.a. Not Waving's strongest dancefloor statement since the one-sided Get Serious (2015) bullet.
It finds him taking the opportunity to make straight-up bangers, rather than 'songs', which were thoroughly tried and tested over successive tours of the USA and ountless shows in Europe too in
the last 9 months.
Too Many Freaks is an anthem in waiting, harnessing a barely-hinged sense of chaos between its careening synth lead, acid squabble and velvet-clad kicks, before the dry-rutting jag and plaintive vox of Vibe Killer takes a dog-grip like This Heat meeting Tuning Circuits.
Top marks go to the check-your-stylus intro for Control Myself on the B-side, which holds its fizzy line into a fetid crevice of what sounds Russell Haswell ramping with Powell, whereas the
crooked clampjaw groove of Ur Lucky Ur Still Alive pivots around a sample a lone raver at Atonal, Berlin 'who had no idea how she got there and what she did the night before'. A ruddy good night
all-round, then
Not Waving co-owns the Ecstatic label alongside Sam Willis. Not Waving is widely regarded a connoisseur of Italian new wave and post-punk music - he compiled the Mutazione (Italian
Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988) set for Strut - and has issued a series of acclaimed, sought-after, playfully anachronistic twists on that sound since 2013.

When LA label Acid Test decided to start the leftfield imprint, Avenue 66, they looked to New Jersey house mystic Joey Anderson for an opening salvo. He delivered the modern psych-dance masterpiece Above The Cherry Moon.' Now Anderson's back again with more of his beguiling dreamlogic. On If One Cares, They Act Different' Anderson works with a lead that could score an unsettling '80s horror flick, eventually introducing his signature quicksilver synths and abstract, jacking drum patterns. Peace There' starts with the square-wave basslines and raspy hats Taking us to a psychedelic far away place. On The Vase", Anderson reins things in, but even his bittersweet, relatively straight-head deep house tracks present an odd paradox. His music so alien and human all at once.

Dutch DJ, producer and Wolfskuil label boss Darko Esser is to self-release his sophomore album, Anipintiros, in April 2014. The eight track album comes four years after his debut and is his first as Tripeo, the techno leaning alias he has been working under most often in recent times.

Working as Tripeo has reinvigorated Esser, who under his own name has been producing his unique take on electronic music for a decade now. 'It was liberating to have another persona take over,' says the man himself. 'I have been so inspired and productive ever since that I woke up one day with the thought 'I'm ready to do another album' and started straight away that day.'

Tripeo music is aimed squarely at the dancefloor, and there sure are some full blooded cuts on the album, but so to are there concessions to the listening experience, meaning deep, dark passages and more leftfield experiments help tie the whole thing together into one cohesive and coherent whole. 'Like all albums, this is a very personal statement,' explains Esser. 'It's just me trying to translate the overwhelming inspiration I feel right now into sound. That, and making the record as diverse as possible without losing the purist identity of Tripeo.'

That identity shines through right from the off on the album, which has been made using a knowing blend of both soft and hardware. 'Anipintiros #1' is a firmly rooted, rubbery bit of deep techno that works you into hypnosis and comes detailed with plenty of otherworldly ambiances. From there, Tripeo explores gallivanting techno run through with celestial pads on 'Anipintiros #2' and tripped out, ever shape shifting and dusty minimal sounds on 'Anipintiros #3'.

'Anipintiros #4' channels the widescreen and pumping techno of Detroit's finest whilst 'Anipintiros #5' is a more industrial and muscular track of the sorts that would sound perfect in the bowels of Berghain. 'Anipintiros #6' is one of the busier and more kinked techno rhythms with punchy drums and fax machine like melodies, before 'Anipintiros #7' thumps with real menace and 'Anipintiros #8' hums and hisses, spits and stutters like the suitably epic and melodic comedown you need after such a captivating ride.Everything, though is backed with serene synth work and an otherworldly sense of alien spirit that runs through all great techno.

There is plenty to get lost in throughout Anipintiros and it proves once again that Esser is someone able to coax far more feeling out of his machines than most.

DJ FEEDBACK

Early support from Blawan, Rødhåd, James Ruskin, Reeko, Exium, Mike Parker, Ben Sims, Rolando, Pfirter, Craig McWhinney, Cadans, Sandrien, Nuno Dos Santos

Almost exactly three years after the first, Redshape has readied his second Red Pack, due for co release by his own Present imprint alongside his frequent Dutch home, Delsin, in June.
Whilst the world is still enjoying the German's latest album "Square", the man himself has typically moved on once more. On Red Pack II he offers up six tracks new of hugely atmospheric and romantically industrial techno across two pieces of vinyl.

First up, 'Disco Marauder' has raw, jangling beats, traumatised vocal cries and plenty of sci-fi ambiance all coalescing into a filmic techno tapestry, before 'Path Dub' goes deeper and more streamlined with rattling claps peeling off taught synth cables in hypnotic fashion. The same track also comes in an original version, which is a much more jagged, roughshod and textured affair.

'The Source' is a track slowed to a crawl that almost seems to want to collapse under its own weight. Machines gurgle and gargle, the beats march on with a heavy heart and widescreen synths all that ever present sense of cinematism that makes Redshape such a unique producer.

Standout track 'Daft Mode' features a beautiful Reese bassline and rich layers of classic Detroit chords of the sort Inner City once championed. Redshape then pairs them with slicing percussion and loose limbed but tough edged beats and lets them roll on to a blissfully emotive oblivion... Fans of 'Mucky Bones' from the first Red Pack might see this track as a close relative. Last track 'Bulp Head' is one of Redshape's more euphoric tracks thanks to the glistening and pixelated melodies which rise up and up through choppy, metallic percussion. It closes out another release from Redshape that offers six more classic pieces that are as idiosyncratic as they innovative..

Kaspi & Stride is a new project from Justin Tripp, best known as one half of the Georgia equation. Leanings has its origins in rigorous yet laid back studio sessions, dual personal practice sensibilities that seem to get at Tripp’s creative ethos as well as any descriptors might. The material here was born out of collaborative studio sessions with multi-instrumentalist Jimy Seitang (Conga Square/Stygian Stride) - the “Stride” of K&S. The music from these sessions has been reworked and recontextualized by Tripp to form the eight tracks found on the record. These compositions are heady and diverse, anchored by infectious drum patterns and intricate electronics, capably occupying a somewhat hard to define space between “club ready” and “home listening.”

“Vishing” throbs with a wide-eyed intensity, infused with the type of deceptively rudimentary synth stabs and bass swells that wouldn’t be out of place on an early Hype Williams record. With contributions from Mary Lattimore and Jon Leland, “Kaptoxa” charts a more ethereal, if no less dizzying, course. Indeed, this is an album that navigates dense, tactile passages and airy, celestial planes with aplomb, making a case for Tripp’s prowess as both composer and arranger with equal priority. The most important thing is to keep moving.